Ghosts
by stormseaker
Summary: A year and a half since the Fall and John is struggling. Today, it's sound.


Ghosts

The people you love

Become ghosts inside you

Of you and like this

You keep them alive

-Robert Montgomery, _Street Poetry_

oooo

John can't help but imagine Sherlock sneering "A girlfriend? Really John. How pedestrian." and John would snap back "Fiancé!" The thought leaves him scowling into a cup of cold tea on more than one damp night.

oooo

After a brief stint exercising his rage against the police department, newspapers and criminal underworld, an exercise that leaves him on several watch lists and his passport suspended, John sinks unresisting into the blandness of work and Harry related drama.

Most days he does little other than putter around Harrys' house, helping to fix it up for resale. Every Thursday and Friday he catches two trains to a clinic on the other side of London where he treats nothing more exciting than bronchitis. Every Thursday, on the way back from the clinic he gets off the train a stop early and does his shopping. Every third Monday he meets with Mrs Hudson at a café a block from Baker Street and tells her he's fine, and that he'll see her again soon. Every now and then he'll take Mary out to dinner, if she asks him to, and take pictures together to post on Facebook. It's all lovely and fine, and he's fine.

Somehow, it feels a little like he's betraying Sherlock, insulting him, by living a life he would pronounce dull. But the monotonous routine fills his head with grey sound that sometimes drowns out the wet thud of flesh and bone impacting pavement. Blurs the sensation of Sherlock limp, pulseless under his fumbling hands, that John simply can't wash off. Perhaps it is that last brief touch that twists something in Johns brain, leaving him with the Synesthetic-esc life he has now.

Today, it's sound.

He stands in the middle of a train car, shoulders scrunched towards his ears and elbows tucked in politely to at least give the impression of affording other people space, and the timbre of Sherlock's voice unspools slowly, tangling between Johns' synapses. He can feel the cadence associated with a deductive explosion pressing against the sides of his head, his earlobes and jaw, resting lightly to brush against his chin and he huddles further into himself. No clear words form, but there is a presence, not unlike the throb of bass music through an apartment wall. Something you feel on your skin rather than hear. It drags against his eardrums, rubs at the edges of the great weeping wound in his chest, sends pain signals spangling from his fingers to twist in his guts. It tightens his shoulders and legs, and smothers him a whisper at a time.

The voice mingles, but does not mix, with the flat hum of electric lighting, and the clamour of the train rattling its way over the tracks, fighting with the bland and blurry murmurs of commuters and a hundred iPods.

His brain whispers_ Tomorrow_, and John tries to redirect his thoughts, although it has been haunting him, taunting him and scratching at his mind for weeks now. Ever since realising the date on a jar of mayonnaise. _Tomorrow will make the 19th month._

The snarled barbed mass of _nononoSHERLOCKpleaseno_ in his chest winds tighter and John tastes blood.

It horrifies him, as much as he is capable of feeling over the grief lingering and leaning on his shuddering heart, because tomorrow Sherlock will have been dead longer than John knew him.

He marvels a little at how upsetting that is, the thought that Sherlock's coffin will soon have spent more time in the company of the man than John has. Did. The last year and a half are blurry and insubstantial in his mind. He can't recall anything significant marking the lengthy passage of time, even though he is always careful to memorise a series of things to recite during his monthly visit with Ms Hudson.

The clinic is going well, Mary is well. No, her parents don't know yet. Harry is well enough, the leg is fine, did you get caught in the snow on Monday? This late in the year! It must be global warming. Did you hear about the young minister, caught with his pants down, again? Horrible, how the price of basic foodstuffs keeps going up.

It's enough that she has stopped making sympathetic noises and exclaiming over the difference that counselling has made in Mrs Turners daughter after the passing of her husband.

_We're not a couple. _

Weren't.

John can't make sense of where the time went. Every day is a mat beige, dry and featureless, bland. With only the incessant tang of blood in the back of his throat and stickiness in the creases of his fingers to add texture. In contrast, his year and a half with Sherlock is vibrant and deep, layers of purple and brown and red and blue and green provide a backdrop to memories of flashing eyes of some indelible mix of light, the world expanding beyond the confines of a single man.

In Johns memories Sherlock himself is silver, edges bleeding into a iridescence casting light and joy and curiosity and wonder on everything. It worries him, because through this light John thinks he is beginning to lose the details, the exact shape of Sherlocks fingers on his violin, the pout he made whenever someone mentioned Johns blog, the uncommon laughter now echoing in his ears, or how he always looped his scarf. Important things, blurring into this vague construct of happiness that John cannot ever return to. His leg throbs its own heartbeat and he sternly reminds himself of the indifferent crowd around him. It would not do to collapse into a screaming mass in a subway car. He can't afford another ASBO.

Instead he gathers himself. Turns his mind from his dreaming reality, towards the tightly folded shopping list pressing into his good thigh. John squeezes his fists, pops his knuckles to the tutting of his mothers memory, and breathes. He steps from the train, dodging a pushy mother with a pram, and the murmur settles around his neck like a warm scarf, pressing close. John has to close his eyes or vomit.

_Goodbye John._

_._

* * *

.

I've been sitting on this story for ages, since Fall really. I apologise for any grammar issues but I couldn't stand hiving this on my desktop any more. It was publish or delete time. I did have another 4 chapters planned but the story never went anywhere and I think this works well enough as a one-shot.

Feedback is always welcome. Thank you for reading.


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